De ce nu?
by NaniWise
Summary: How was he supposed to know, honestly? Happy three shot fic. Please R n R. Title is in Romanian for no reason.
1. UNU

(Honestly, this is a bologna fan fiction made purely for my own pleasure and happiness. I own nothing and I hope you enjoy. God bless you all.)

Nea was no stranger to being called "Genius" or "Incredibly Intelligent", even when he was very small. He always got an 'A' on any test he received in school and he developed an interest in college level subjects at a very young age. He had a very bright future ahead of him so those two words were like every other word to him.

But, despite this, perhaps he, somehow managed to misjudge the situation.

Perhaps, just maybe, all those compliments made their way to his head.

It was possible that, just maybe, he trusted in his own mind a bit too much.

That being said, when the unknown factor in one of the many experiments he thought foolproof came crashing in and messed up all the results and all the expectations he had for the results, he became quite a bit flustered.

It happened. People made mistakes. It was a part of life.

The only problem was that Nea, someone who relied purely on his own strengths and intelligence, had no idea what on earth he was to do when that happened.

Some might call it close mindedness or the inability to improvise, but Nea liked to simply say that when life decided to pull it's little pranks or take a full U turn on a path to a predetermined course, he just never saw it coming.

That's right. Go on, laugh. The great intelligent genius Nea Campbell was caught off guard, staggered with no ability recover, knocked on his rear when his legs were broken.

What was he supposed to say?

It wasn't as though he lost all hope of ever succeeding in this battle, he simply just didn't know whether or not the battle was even there anymore or if he ever understood it to begin with.

That's right.

At last, upon confronting the Millennium Earl, his brother, his other half, he addressed him with familiarity, he embraced him warmly and called him by name.

He did all this with a bitter heart, knowing that, no matter how much he wished it to be otherwise, his brother was far too distant to ever hear his voice.

The suit had bonded with his being, inseparable like they once were. There was no telling the mad puppet from the boy he once knew.

He was gone. Dead. Deleted. Call it what you will

Nea knew this to be a fact.

So, imagine the look on Nea's face when the suit and its many layers were pulled back like a peeled orange, separating till there were two beings, one being the hollow suit like a June bug's caste on trees in the summer, the second being that very brother he was absolutely positive remained irretrievable, looking not a day older since he last saw him, right in front of him like it was nobody's business.

Yes. Not united to form an all too familiar facade but separated into two beings.

One, a hollow abomination of cruel mechanical flesh baring the hideous form of a goblin.

Two, the familiar face identical to his own displaying vivid emotions that no mechanical monstrosity would ever be capable of faking.

If it was just that, he would have been fine. He could have just hidden that fact under layers of cynical thinking and pessimistic attitudes, but it wasn't.

Those eyes of gold. Those eyes could never be faked.

All it took was one glance to see that they were genuine, the same eyes he had seen so many times back when things were innocent, clear, better.

It was really him. It was really Mana.

So imagine it. Imagine the dramatic frown, the eyes the size of dinner plates, and every ounce of color draining from Nea's face.

Imagine how the perfecting functional cogs and coils being thrown into turmoil and entropy at a single glance.

Imagine the confliction, the confusion, the sudden muteness that overtook him, the paralysis, the absolute panic because he genuinely had no idea what to do in that one moment.

Only one word came to mind.

It was the only one he dared to say.

"What?".

You see, when an intelligent genius like him says they had prepared for "Every possibility", they are not being truthful. Preparing for the best possibility would set a person up for disappointment when the worst possibility comes about. Plus, it's a common assumption that if the best thing happens, you'll know exactly what to do and that you haven't bogged down your every logic machine with repeated patterns from times past of disappointment and heartache so that you never expect the best thing.

Honestly, Nea had seen the worst of humanity, angels and the demons. He learned that all disappoint just as easily as batting an eyelash.

It wasn't as though the world had a record of making dreams come true. It wasn't as though Nea was silly for seeing the glass half empty.

How was he supposed to know this would happen? This defied every fact and piece of logic he picked up along the way of life and he truly thought he knew everything. He genuinely believed that he had all his facts together in order, alphabeticalized and color coded like a usual boring folder door.

But then, of course, the life that seemed to hate him oh so very much thought it proper to turn hiss whole world upside down and scatter those notes he worked so hard on all across the four corners of the earth, pulling a stunt like this as though it were as easy and logical as long division.

How was he supposed to know? Really?

How was he supposed to mathematically predict that Mana, the one who needed an explosion to wake him up, suddenly became a light sleeper and came running when he was called?

How was Nea supposed to find through scientific experiments that Nea's own voice, the mere fact that he was here, alive, and talking to his brother would suddenly restart his heart and send him fleeing from the grave that bound him.

That it would be enough to show him how little he really knew.

To show him how young he was.

So much for straight A's and a fancy college. So much for being an intelligent genius.

Look where it got him. Lost, confused, all scrambled with tears in his eyes, holding the brother he thought he had lost forever in his arms.

He was like a child again.

But honestly.

Perhaps that's the worst thing about the best thing; You never see it coming.


	2. DOI

(Hello again. This is also done for my personal happiness but it was also done for the sake of the lovely first reviewer of this story. Thank you yet again for your kind words and I hope you enjoy. I own nothing and I hope you all enjoy, actually. God bless you all.)

Tyki had been puffing away wildly at three packs worth of cigarettes since it happened, still not entirely sure what to do with himself.

Sitting beside the current Noah of pleasure who bore his original face, the filthy street urchin called Tyki Mikk, Nea snatched up the pack of cigarettes from the man's hand and put a little white cigarette in his mouth.

The man complained that they were expensive, but he had hardly retained enough braincells to care.

"I have no answers." He said to the man quickly before Tyki could say another word.

Somehow, Nea thought it necessary for all to know that. Heck, he still hadn't fully accepted it, himself.

Yes, that is correct. The incredibly intelligent was losing the mind he treasured so much.

Nea D. Campbell had been brought so low by recent events, that he began to hardly care about anything at all anymore. Being indifferent to himself, the world, the war and those around him was definitely an understatement.

Nea suddenly began to doubt his reality, his identity and all he perceived to be fact. Perhaps that was what brought about this reaction.

That's why he silently sucked away at the end of the cigarette, fully intending to light it and smoke his fears and anxiety away in a little white cloud, where it would fly up into the atmosphere and never be seen again.

He sat there by the odd man's side for a while, silent and still, like a statue frozen still by his confusion.

The way he felt was so simple and yet so complicated. That shouldn't have been possible in his perfectly simplified equation but as Nea had said, he didn't have answers.

Perhaps, he thought, intelligence was fleeting just as beauty was.

That was the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

His dear mother was strong with wisdom. It did her nothing but good. She would kill him if she saw him smoking but he apparently knew no truth, so perhaps smoking wasn't as poor for one's health as he may have first thought.

He, on the other hand, was strong in knowledge, on the liquid facts of an ever changing reality. That being said, perhaps he knew what the world was once, but perhaps he never did.

Maybe if Nea was strong on wisdom like his mother, he would be able to properly understand and resolve the confliction inside him.

Perhaps then, the boy genius would finally understand what he needed to do now that his brother had returned.

But more than even that, he might just learn why his brother, his only twin, his Mana would give himself to the Black Order without a fight.

Why the brother he had just gotten back, after all this time, the brother who had betrayed Nea's trusted and hurt him, the brother who's smile haunted him like a ghost, would, despite the protests of the Noah, give himself over willingly to his greatest enemy.

But Nea had just watched him go. He watched Mana get pulled away, taken, stolen by a pack of crows he could have easily taken down if he had merely lifted a finger, but he didn't.

He just looked at him with tear streaked cheeks and smiled.

Before Nea even had time to react, he was gone.

What, was he trying to make up for all he had done Nea? Was he trying to fix consuming him, killing him and causing him so much pain all those years ago?

Did he think he would suddenly be forgiven for it all by running away?

But Nea didn't know. He didn't have any answers after all.

He didn't know what his brother was thinking, who had become in his absence, who Nea became in this second life, or why it filled with such rage and madness to think that Mana would be tortured and killed, destroyed slowly in the darkest depths of the Black Order.

It wasn't as though Mana's death was anything different from what he intended but was that important anymore? What had he promised on that day that remained consistent now?

This was a different time, but could it have been a different reality as well?

If so, how could he be sure of anything? The sun beating upon his skin and the taste of blood in his mouth? If all was relative in a fluid reality, how could he ever know what was real?

How did he know that Mana was genuine? That he should save him from the order? That he should remain in the clutches of those that would surely bring about his end? How did he know what was right or wrong? How did he even know which was right to follow?

This was the price someone like him had to pay for living his life by science, by facts.

It was simple. Like Nea had said, he had no answers. Thee facts and formulas he had once trusted in had failed him and the foundation of his frame of mind had now begun to crumble.

If he had listened to his mother all those years ago, perhaps he wouldn't be in this mess, but he hadn't. He was so concerned with an education to get him a place away from the dull countryside, he didn't have time to listen.

She would surely have a fit if she saw what had become of him now.

A small smirk found its way onto his lips.

But in remembrance for the woman, wherever she was, be she dead or alive, he recalled he speak of ridiculous things such as "Always believe" or "Listen to your heart".

She was a dreamer. No one could tame that about her.

Thinking back, since his recent heartbreak from the facts he loved so much, perhaps he needed to think a little bit less. Maybe he could rebound on dreams and feelings a bit till the facts got envious.

Like he said, those dreams gave her wisdom, facts beyond the realm of scientific laws. She never went to college, she never got straight A's in school, she was never called an intelligent genius.

All these things and yet she remained so sure of everything.

If he had become weak and feeble like a child, than following her example should not be too hard.

Listening to his heart, his bitter, broken, weak, numbed heart with hardly the strength to beat in his chest, he realized he still knew one thing.

Love.

As clear as any fact, as clear as the sun beating upon his skin and the tasted of blood in his mouth, Nea knew he loved Mana and if those feelings weren't recuperated by the other, he would never have risen from his slumber in the Earl's suit.

No matter what his other half did to others or himself, deep down Nea knew that would never change.

Rising from his seat by the Noah of pleasure, he spat the cigarette in the dirt.

The man asked him why, looking mildly offended but Nea cut him off.

"I'm going to save him." He whispered, "I'm going to save my brother."

A moments pause. Tyki looked bewildered beyond words, before he choked out the only thing he was capable of saying.

"What?" He asked.

"How the hell should I know." Nea smiled as as he turned to the man, "I don't have answers."

(Sort that this one is poorly written. I did try. Have a good day.)


	3. TREI

**_(Once again, for all who are confused, this is literally an early Christmas gift to myself. It's made purely to make me happy, not so much to follow canon logic. That being said, I own nothing and I hope you enjoy. God bless you all.)_**

If put into words, though strange, he was sure it would sound something like this; Nea made him want to be real again.

He never thought he would say that. He never thought such words would leave his lips because he had long buried the reason for those words long ago.

The guilt had killed him once. Every easy, the pain of what he had done chipped off and distorted another piece of who he truly was buried deep inside him. It would have killed, deleted, erased the identity that once dwelled in such profound innocence, purity, clarity.

It had been so long and he had nearly forgotten what it meant to be real.

The years had passed by meaninglessly and aimlessly. He walked without true purpose, numbing himself to the pain of existence as he became a mindless drown to the whims of cruelty. That distant memory was so near out of sight, out of reach, out of mind, he thought it gone forever.

That being said, imagine the look on his face when Nea, the brother that forgotten memory had lost so long ago blocked the path leading to death he had walked upon for so long.

Imagine how, under the rays of the smile and the shimmer of those familiar child-like eyes the wretched world had suffered to lose, something inside him broke.

Nea did not curse him like he should, but rather he greeted him so familiarly and fondly. Warmth filled the empty stone that was his heart, the sort of warmth he'd never felt before.

Imagine how, being embraced and called by the name he had long despised in a manner so lovingly, for a moment he thought the years of hardship and turmoil had never torn them apart.

Imagine how, in those few treasured blessed moments he thought he'd never see come, he wanted to be Mana again.

Yes, an unspeakable crime was committed in his heart that day. He knew this, but who was it that made those laws, he wondered.

Why was he bound to this pain and denial? Was it because of guilt? Was it because of all he had done?

These chains held him still and kept him from moving, from actually making the difference desired by so many.

The odd thing about this was that these chains did not truly bind him to whatever faske reality he clung to. Rather, these chains of fear and hopelessness were consistent, always their to keep him grounded in reality.

No one was holding him down. Though the power was tempting, distorting, perverting, the suit was just a suit; It was a weapon wielded in the wrong hands, nothing more, nothing less.

No one was keep Mana from being himself but Mana. He was so scared of the guilt that he his himself behind great stone walls and fell fast asleep.

The light of that existence, that familiar presence he missed so terribly much shone through those cracks, the flaws in his so perfectly thought out architecture and soon enough, it all fell apart, falling to the ground becoming nothing more than dust.

He heard his voice and he realized that Nea believed with that same confidence he had since childhood that his brother was Mana, his Mana. Even after all he had done to the other, he still believed.

It broke his heart, and yet all he ever was was mended in an instant. He felt everything and yet nothing. Without warning or premonition, Mana began to feel real.

The mask was broken and he was laid bare to judgment and yet he didn't hide. He felt bravery cording through his veins because certainly the older brother of Nea wouldn't run and hide behind shields like a coward.

What an embarrassment that would be.

He realized that it wasn't about forgiveness but with Nea here, standing in front of him, surely such a miracle as forgiveness wasn't entirely out of question.

Even so, he could never undo what he did in the past but, perhaps the beginning of truly being forgiven is not masking the same mistakes twice. Perhaps the past could just be forgiven but not forgotten because he was given a second chance to restart, to break the cycle, to change.

Was it not Nea who told him to never step walking forward? Then why was he so determined to cling to the past?

Mother always told them to believe in dreams, to have faith, to take the words of fairy tales as reality.

Perhaps he should have dropped his expectations of reality long ago because parting with the suit he had trapped himself inside for so many years was just as easy as breathing and when he let himself become Mana once more, he soon found that that first breath was the hardest thing he had ever done as tears fell down his cheeks.

It was hard and yet he pulled through because Nea wanted him to be Mana once again. If simply to make a single dream of Nea's become a reality, he would tear himself to shreds and build himself up again piece by piece. For him, he soon found he would tear down the sky for.

And not a heartbeat after, he took his brother, his friend, his other half, his dream his nightmare, his world, his everything into his arms and held like he wouldn't let go again.

He, Mana Campbell was real once again.

And so, he faced up to the punishment due for all his crimes. Sure, it was only the least someone like him deserved, but it was all he could do. Mana was thankful that Nea watched him be taken away willingly by the swarm of crows because he wanted him to know just that and maybe believe once again in the things said to be impossible.

Knowing this, it was easy.

Mana did not think Nea, the other apostles, or even Road would come to save him. Giving himself up to the cruel hands of the humans was a betrayal, a cruel abandonment of those he was supposed to lead to some kind of victory.

But to be honest, this was the right thing to do. Seeing Nea again changed, altered, fixed something inside him and he knew he couldn't, just couldn't be that leader for them again. He was not who he once was, being weak, stupid, vulnerable to pain and the elements so he let himself go.

He cut the chains, and he let himself free.

The pain, so sharp like needles of rust chipping the bottom of his skin, was heavy, nearly suffocating him in the constrictions and tightening of his throat, nearly breaking his fingers as they curled upon themselves, tearing the skin of his palms.

The innocence burnt away bits and pieces of his flesh like acid. It drove him half mad to know that all he would have to is lift a finger to stop this pain. It took more willpower he even knew he had to resist the burning itch. It took all the courage Nea gave him to endure this and somehow it was made easy.

Was this a mercy?

He might never know.

These mere humans certainly did know how to make a body of flesh react to grave amounts of pain and agony. They were masters of the art, having ancient techniques of torture and torment passed on from millions of generations.

The pain was great but it meant so little to him.

Mana almost seemed not to feel it at all, like he were but an unsympathetic spectator watching from a distance the slow murder of one stupid young man.

Yes, murder.

He was going to let them kill him. He was going to let this agonizing pain consume all that he was till all was erased.

It may have been so much less than what he deserved, but it was all he thought he could do.

Things were better this way, he thought in comfort.

Mana was aware of Nea's intentions. Nea was going to destroy him and take on the suit before destroying himself. It was the plan and the promise they had made long ago and Mana was ashamed to think that he had forgotten something so important.

It was one of the last things Nea said before he died, before he was taken far away, before Mana thought he might never see him again. It was the day life had fallen apart for them all and the true identity was buried so deep he thought it might never resurface.

It was the perfect plan, yes, but as time had passed, he began to grow further and further displeased with it.

The first of his complaints were simple: Since Nea was very small, he always had the annoying tendancy to take the world upon his shoulders. He would blame himself for even the smallest of his family's ailments, thinking it his responsiblity to fix it. Mana knew how soft hearted his brother could be, so he could not imagine how much it would hurt him, how much guilt Nea would feel if Mana were to die by his hand.

Mana couldn't do it and he couldn't let Nea do it either.

The second of his complaints was a bit more complicated: The perfect plan required Nea to die.

Mana had already lived long. He had lived many years with many chances to live well, but he failed every one of them. He deserved this punishment.

Nea, however, didn't. Nea never got the chance to make his own life with his own two hands. Simply put, Nea did not deserve to die.

Thats when Mana came to an understanding that he would die here and take the suit with him in death.

Perhaps it was noble, perhaps it was cowardly.

Perhaps it was childish, perhaps it was mature but Mana could not tell very well through haze of agony.

He could no longer see with his eyes.

He could no longer feel with his fingers.

He could no longer hear with his ears.

Mana did not hear the door of the cell open. Mana did not feel himself being lifted from the ground. Mana did not see the familiar face look at him with terror, asking, begging, pleading for him to open his eyes.

But the warmth rekindled in his heart was reconized and welcomed and he gave a weak smile to who he knew held him in these few moments of relief.

"Nea...?" He whispered far far too softly, far too hopefully, far too weakely, "You... You're... Here...?"

"You absolute idiot!" The warm presence seemed to say, pulsating with every sharp sylliblem, "A simple sorry would have safficed!"

"I... I'm...so... sor-"

"No, don't talk! You're hurt."

"Thank you... Thank you for being alive... Thank you..."

He was never good with words. Mana could simplify statements, but these words in his heart he didn't even know where to begin to express. Those three words, no matter how lost he became, had always encompassed his being. He was always afraid to say it, thinking he would be denied even these feelings but here, in this moment at his brothers side, they seemed to slip right off his tongue.

Mana wouldn't hide anymore. This time, he would be real.

"I... I love... you..."

And with that final breath, the lost boy fell into a deep sleep and saw no more.

He wasn't scare. He wasn't in pain. He wasn't alone.

Not anymore.


End file.
